Should You Be Recording Live

Speaker 1 (00:02)

Hello and welcome Podcast Me Anything and ask me Anything for all things podcasting. I'm your host Ben Clay, and I am joined here in the studio with Matthew Passy, the Podcast Control. Matthew and I wanted to move the conversation beyond the Podcasting 101 topics and move into the intermediate to advance podcasting strategy to reach your goals, to interact with the show, submit your questions to be answered live, book a podcast audio with Matthew or find the notes from today's show. Head on over to Podcastmining.com.

Speaker 2 (00:31)

Welcome back to another episode, Podcast Me Anything. And as always, I am joined with Matthew Passy here out of his home studio in New Jersey. I am joined I never really talked about it much, but I joined my studio here in Wisconsin. And we're going to talk about that just oddity of being in remote places, being in different places. And we've talked about previous episodes, about what it means to really record locally and what's the benefit and how that all goes. But today we're going to dive into a couple of different topics related to search and the anxiety that can come with a live recording like we're doing here on YouTube. And also what can happen if you're doing an audio recording where you have the ability to make mistakes, start over and keep going. So Matthew, let's kick it off right away. Some news came out on Pod News that wasn't maybe News or New Headline, but it was this article that talked about search within the systems of podcasting and what we don't really have in podcast app, whether it be Apple Spotify is like a Google Power type interface where you're bringing all these different things, and it's also not tied to what you click.

Speaker 2 (01:35)

The search like an Apple isn't tied to it even clicking on your web browser. It's just whatever keywords you type in there. So when people dive into search and figuring out search optimization with their podcast, what do we need to know and how do we need to think about figuring that out? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:51)

So this is a piece that was I guess it was a research project done by Pod News is James Cridland and Mark Steadman. And if you don't know Mark, he had once had a podcast hosting company called Podium, which I believe was acquired by I can't remember who maybe Castos but pretty savvy guy who understands the space really well, put together a really nice platform and does a lot of fun things in the space. So they decided to do some experiments to see when you put content into your feed, what is it that is becoming searchable? And what was interesting was that one, it is not universal. So what happens on one platform is not the same that happens on other platforms. And number two, most of the things that you are generating aren't really all that searchable. So when we talk to clients, we always say the three most important fields are the title of your show, the artist field, and then the title of each episode. And that still pretty much holds up. Based on this research, if you go into Apple and you do a search, those are the three fields in your RSS feed that they are looking for.

Speaker 3 (02:56)

And of course, every podcast platform is searching your title. So titles show titles obviously should be descriptive. They should be keyword friendly or super unique so that when people are looking for your show, they search for your show, they find your show. Recently I've been doing a search for titles for some new clients, and it's amazing to see how many people are surfacing the exact same show name as each other. And so making it difficult for people to find your show when they go into any of these platforms. As far as the description of your show is concerned, Apple doesn't really pull that. Amazon doesn't pull that. Pocket Cast doesn't. But that does come up in Google Podcast. It comes up in Spotify and a few other places. So still a good idea to think about the search ability of your description. It's a good place to put another keywords that maybe don't fit in your title or maybe that don't go into your artist field, but not going to do much for you on Apple, no one is really using the person Tags, the author tag. That's what we are calling the artist field.

Speaker 3 (04:08)

That's the one where when it says who's the show by, that's another very searchable field. So it's very good to think about what you're going to put in your artist field. So whether is it more important for you to be the searchable entity or for your company to be the searchable entity entity. And if not, let's say the company wants to be the artist field. Right? This Podcast me anything. And let's say it's brought to you by the podcast consultant. Well, if I want my name to become searchable, maybe what I would do is change the title of the show to Podcast Me Anything with Ben Killoy and Matthew Passy and then the podcast consultant in the artist field. Right. So that's a way to kind of sneak in that extra term without getting two keyword stuffy in the title. Keywords don't even exist. Don't worry about them. Nobody really uses them except for Cash Box and Player. Fm. And then looking at the episode titles again, episode titles super important. Most of the platforms, when you search, they're going to look at episode titles. Descriptions of the episodes are not really searched except for Google Podcast Me Anything good pods.

Speaker 3 (05:16)

Now, both of those platforms are seeing a nice increase in the number of people using them, but for the most part, not a huge sum of people are over there. And so your description is not super helpful in the search within podcasting apps. By the way, I should say this is all about podcasting apps. Obviously the best form of SEO is a website with proper SEO and proper tagging and all that good stuff. So great piece by Mark and James. Here a few key takeaways from them that I would wholeheartedly agree with is if you have a guest put their name in the episode title, especially if it is someone who is well searched for or if their company is well searched for. That's a good way to up SEO for the content that you're producing. And truthfully, don't rely on these apps for discoverability in general. Get yourself out there on websites. Get your websites, blogged about, talked about, linked back to your websites. Right? That's where the crux of SEO happens. So really important to focus on that more than anything else.

Speaker 2 (06:23)

One thing that I get hung up on and I'm interested to see where your mind goes on this is I always struggle to name the episodes like I'm naming a book, and book titles generally aren't that long and you're trying to do it in five or six words or less. Do you feel it's more like a book title or it's its own category? You should feel to be long winded if it does warrant making sure that title describes accurately what could be searched on that episode.

Speaker 3 (06:51)

My sense is I think there are people who are worried about the aesthetics of an episode title. So if you're more than five or six words, let's say many of the players will cut them off or apps will cut them off. So it's like, why do I bother even putting it in there if people can't see it? I'm less worried about that. I would say be as descriptive as possible. Some of my clients tend to use, I'm going to say, run on sentences as their titles and doesn't really seem to hurt them, especially since they are able to get so many technical keywords in their titles by doing it this way. Now, I wouldn't say just like throw a keyword salad in your title just for the fun of it, right? Somebody is going to look at that and be like, I don't know about that. But if you can eloquently and delicately get those things in there, then yeah, absolutely, you should be doing that. But the other thing about titles and it's funny you say think about it like a book. The thing that I've been telling a lot of people lately is when it comes to your episode titles is try to solicit an emotional response right there's that saying people will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel.

Speaker 3 (08:06)

And so your episode titles need to make people feel something excitement, anticipation, like they're getting value. It's not just enough to tell them what you're doing, but you really want to make them be like, OOH, that's the kind of response you want to get from someone, from your title from your show, from your description. Like, everything that you do needs to have a little bit more emotion to it. I say that as the title of this on YouTube right now. Podcast me anything for February 11. Like, we're still kind of messing around and figuring out and we'll fix it, but try and be a little bit more emotional with what you're doing and something that you just kind of tweaked on.

Speaker 2 (08:45)

And I've learned this editing podcast for you, and I do this when I edit podcast me anything. I try to think, what question did we really answer? Like, what was the thesis of that episode? And tried to put that as a call to action thought, because if I can label it in my mind, or at least that's how I designed this, if I can label it to a question that they're thinking about, then they're automatically going to assume we probably answered it. And it's more likely to get into the thinking of consciousness of what they're trying to figure out or what they're looking to add in that moment. And there may be what they're searching for. And I don't know whether that's right or wrong, but I feel like it leans towards initiating that response of, well, that's exactly what I felt. Or sometimes if it's an interview kind of going towards a thesis or a feeling that that guest gifted the audience by sharing their story, like, what should you take away from it? There was an episode that I recently did on my podcast, Military Veteran dad, and I titled it What Part of the Problem Is You?

Speaker 2 (09:42)

Which kind of evokes a necessary response of like, oh, that's kind of like, that's a hard inner question that if you're not thinking about yourself or deep work on yourself, that's going to hit you pretty hard because you're going to like, I've never really considered what part of the dumpster fire that might be my life is actually my fault. And initiating that response to get there.

Speaker 3 (10:03)

Yeah. I mean, the fact that you even cringed at your own title is very telling that what you did is probably exactly what you should have been doing. If it makes you a little bit afraid to use a title, you might be on the right track. Now listen, I'm not saying go and be offensive for the fun of being offensive, but if you put something up there and you're like, oh, that's salacious or that's different.

Speaker 2 (10:30)

Someone might throw that.

Speaker 3 (10:31)

Yeah, someone might troll that. Like, good, that means you're going to get a response. Right. And sometimes any news is good news.

Speaker 2 (10:38)

That's one thing that maybe we can do a slight tangent that I often figuring this thing out for five years now, and only recently in the last two months have I got some people that disagreed with things that I said. And it feels good initially, because in the beginning you think you need to avoid it. Like you don't want to be part of those people to get trolled or get people these long conversations or these comment threads that just explode and so you avoid the whole fanfare of it. But then when you find your voice, when you have that courage to step on a title like that, you evoke an emotion from someone on the other side of the argument. And when you've done that, I think those are signs of the universe. I even recorded an episode about it, about how I offended someone and I felt good about it, because that means that I'm finding my true place where I'm willing to take a stand. And that's something else I think about when you're titling a podcast, is this leaning me towards more of where I stand on whatever issue that you're podcasting about, which then builds that polarity of attracting someone that's going to be like, I'm going to argue to the death that they're wrong.

Speaker 2 (11:43)

I take those signs as really positive when people start trying to tell you that you're wrong.

Speaker 3 (11:48)

Yeah. I mean, I think there's like two ways to be really successful in social media and in podcasting in general. One is to be the person who either has all the facts or is gathering all the information. Right. Be the source of the information. I am live tweeting a football game. I am sitting in front of a hearing in Congress telling you exactly what is happening. Or I'm a journalist who just wrote this story. Right. People who have facts and information and trusted resources are people that others want to follow and get behind, because that's going to be a good source of information. The other ones who are interesting to follow are usually the ones who make us feel something, who generate controversy, who generate thought.

Speaker 2 (12:38)

Curiosity is another word that comes to mind.

Speaker 3 (12:40)

Yeah, curiosity is a fantastic word for that. Actually. That's a great word for doing it. Right. Like somebody who can take what is happening and opine on it, or who can suss it down to a unique thought or a different perspective that we're not seeing anywhere else. Right. Like the people who are just aware rehashing the same things over again, they're doing all right. But it's usually the folks who come out and say, no, I see something different than that. Or I thought this, which a lot of people aren't thinking about. Those are the ones who are going to really grow an audience and get people to respond. And yeah, that response is not always going to be somebody who says, oh, I agree so much with you. I love what you have to say. No, some people are looking for a fight. Some people are just trolls. Right. Some people are just going to be nasty and mean, and they're just going to say mean stuff all the time because they want to be a jerk to you. And if that's the case. Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:35)

That says more about them than it does about you. And you have to detach from that. Meaning is one step in podcasting that you have to grow through.

Speaker 3 (13:42)

Right. Move on. But there are also going to be other people who are saying, you know, that's interesting, but have you seen it from this side or. I don't agree because of my life experience has shown me this. And those are opportunities for you to learn, for you to grow, for you to hear a different perspective and create conversation that's not happening in other places. So I kind of agree with that. So try and get more emotional and yeah, try and do things that get you out of your comfort zone, responsibly. Right. Again, it's easy to get yourself canceled by saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, being an outright jerk. But, you know, it's also okay to take a few chances if you can do them in a smart, responsible and respectful way.

Speaker 2 (14:25)

I'm glad we went down that tangent. We haven't really talked a lot about someone kind of categorizes podcast etiquette or podcast posture. But I think that was a good tangent. And I'm glad we went down and maybe something we go into a future deep dive on the podcast in the future as well.

Speaker 3 (14:40)

I think it's great.

Speaker 2 (14:41)

So pivoting to kind of approach to one, that we are live on YouTube, and two, we're going to dive in and Twitter.

Speaker 1 (14:49)

You got that working.

Speaker 2 (14:50)

It wasn't really if we were going to cross off Twitter in the beginning. And what we're essentially talking about here today is something we actually talked about off air leading up to this conversation. And I admitted to Matthew that one thing he does really well is in an interview that's just an audio podcast, he will abruptly stop talking and he's like, you know what? That's really stunk. Let's go back and redo that again.

Speaker 3 (15:11)

And he'll reassign more often than I want to admit.

Speaker 2 (15:13)

He'Ll reap the question and it will be flawless. And to the person on the other end listening, they never even know what happened. Now, for me, I have this perfection that I go in with it. It's probably partially a Marine that I want to present myself as this consciousness for 60 Minutes that everything was perfect and I had the right thing to say when I had to say it. And I don't give myself permission enough to do what Matthew does brilliantly of saying or even giving the guests the opportunity. Like you want to reset that a different way because it sounded like you got stumbled on your words to make sure that they say the best answer as well. I don't do that really well. And so that's what started this conversation, because it's a big difference between a live recording and a post production recording where you can do what you need to the audio to make it look polished and perfect that you don't really have to know how the sauce is made. But in podcasting, when you're doing it live on YouTube like this, you get to see how the sauce is made, you get to see the mistakes, you get to see what happens, you get to see the bloopers.

Speaker 2 (16:11)

And that can create a big difference that I don't think podcasters really slow down enough.

Speaker 3 (16:17)

I had a very unique career experience that has prepared me for this. I used to work at a job that required me to go on air live constantly. But then throughout the rest of the day I was doing a lot of stuff that was taped and could be edited and fixed. So it's very easy for me to kind of switch on and off which way that I have to be. So right now, I know we are live. And so if I make a mistake, I've either got to quickly correct and just barrel through it, or frankly, don't even worry about the mistake and just move on. Because if I stop and point it out, then I'm making it easy for everybody else to hear it. That's what everybody's going to hear. They're going to probably say something anyway. But being live, you just kind of know to go with it. I've even got a good knack for knowing when it's okay to curse because I'm on air. We used to do broadcasting and not curse because I'm taping something or just in a completely different setting. Super helpful, by the way, when you become a parent and you're able to turn that off and not drop the F bombs in front of your children.

Speaker 3 (17:18)

But when it comes to recording, I think it is super important not that you have to be perfect, but that you can remember that you don't have to be perfect. Oftentimes when we are helping somebody record for the first time or we are talking to a guest, or even when I'm personally recording with someone for the first time, usually I have this little spiel that I always say to them, which is, Listen, we're being recorded, somebody else is going to listen to this and go through it. So either one, if I ask a question that you don't like, you can just stop me and say, Matthew, no, that question was terrible. What's wrong with you? Also lightens the mood a little bit, like it gives them a chance to laugh and breaks the ice a little bit. I also say to them, too, if you find yourself stumbling over an answer, just stop, take a deep breath and we'll restart it. They can either restart that sentence, that paragraph, or if they want, I'll go back and re ask the entire question one. It gives the person a chance to collect themselves, think, give the answer that they want to give to it relaxes them.

Speaker 3 (18:19)

When we do hit record, because most people don't have that experience of having to do live broadcasting versus tape stuff. And many people get nervous in front of an open mic or an on air camera or something like that. Anything you can do to kind of take the pressure off them, make them feel less nervous. And truthfully, the other thing is, it's okay to stop and think. It's okay to pause whether you're doing it live like we are now. A pause can add some drama. But more importantly, when you're recording something, you know what? A pause can be really easily identified and easy for someone to clean up later. So it's okay to pause and think. And if something's being edited for the editor to know, okay, we're going to tighten that up or, hey, we messed it up, we're going to go retake that question and that person has a chance to clean up more cleanly. The worst thing you can do is you start talking to make a mistake and then you say, oh, you know, it was 23. Did I say 23? No, what I meant is 24. Sorry. Now I've got to figure out a way to take that 24 out of that jumble of word salad of you, notifying me, that you made a mistake and try and put it into where that 23 was, as opposed to you just going back and saying, oh, hold on, let me stamp up.

Speaker 3 (19:38)

And so it was 24, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, that's a lot easier for your editor to work with. So it's okay to not be perfect when you're recording. And again, it's also okay to not be perfect when you're live. Just relax, breathe, talk. Take a breath if you have to. If you have a lot of filler words, listen, we're used to filler words at this point in live production. We've been living two years in a pandemic where everybody was talking to each other, essentially over a broadcast. Right? So it's okay. The more you do it, the better you get. And also, you should watch yourself. You should listen to yourself. You should never just put something out there and say and then be like, oh, I record it. That's why I'm never going to listen to it again, because you need to air check yourself. You need to listen and watch yourself and be like, oh, what was I doing there? What happened? And that'll help you improve upon your performances.

Speaker 2 (20:33)

I also saw something when you were talking there with a perception of posture that we come into these interviews with, one as a guest, but then also as a host, a projection is that you know what the hell you're talking about? Because there's some form within your head of probably an imposter that maybe you feel like you know what you're talking about. You do know what you're talking about. But there's this version that you're like, well, you want to make sure you present your best foot forward, your first impression. And I think that's probably the first step where all the other thoughts lead from is we present ourselves as having to be something as this perfect person because you want that projection to the other person you're talking to, especially if maybe they're farther along in life and they maybe have more accolades than you. You definitely don't want to make it seem like you're an amateur, but at the same time, I think there is a mindset shift before you hit record that you're not an amateur. And actually, I would argue and I think you would agree that a pro is able to create a professional production because they can pause, because they can reboot.

Speaker 2 (21:32)

And it's less worrying about trying to make a perfect recording for something that you're looking at in the moment and more focus on being a professional to the millions of downloads that hopefully you're getting because your podcast and you're listening to podcast anything and your podcast me anything.

Speaker 3 (21:45)

Yeah. And I mean, truthfully, all of this gets a lot easier with the right preparation in general, even this episode. I'll admit, I would say I'm more distracted doing this than I should be because I haven't live streamed in a while we haven't done on this platform either. So I'm kind of like I hit record. Is it working yet? Is it streaming over here? I'm checking Twitter. I'm checking this. I'm fixing Twitter while we're talking. And so the fact that I've got to try and juggle so many balls in the air while we're doing this is taking away from my ability to be smoother and polished. Same thing is going to happen when you're doing just a regular podcast interview, right? If you have researched your guest well, if you've written out your questions, not to use them, but just if you've kind of studied the topics that you want to talk about, you can have a better conversation because you're not nervous about remembering where you want to go or what you want to do or what you want to say. That preparation is just so important for so many reasons. So wand, of course, if you're going to start doing a lot more live, stream, practice, right?

Speaker 3 (22:49)

Practice setting it up, practice hitting record, practice hitting stream, practice looking at the chats, practice making sure, like, just do that a couple of times so that when you're ready to go live, you're not sitting here worrying like me, fidgeting with the settings, being like, Is this okay? Did I do this right? Why isn't anybody watching? My mind is in two different places right now. And I bet you if we do this again next week, it'll be a lot smoother, but you get to enjoy me messing it up. That's kind of the joy of the show is us doing it live and giving you the real organic experience. But then the other thing, too, is just know what you're going to talk about. Right. People who are prepared are able to pivot and relax no matter what. And if you're interviewing someone else, it should be a lot easier because really, you only have to really be on for 10% of the conversation. Right. You really want to ask a question and then get out of the way of the person you're talking to. And for the guest, it should be pretty easy because we're asking you about either stuff, you know, or who you are.

Speaker 3 (23:50)

So, yeah, like, people are going to get nervous and that's going to make them sound not as confident. But what I always tell guests is we brought you on for a reason. We didn't bring you on because we think you're performative and because we think you're going to to go show. We brought you on because you're the expert at this. You wrote the book, you're fantastic, you're hilarious. So we just want you. So if you could just sit back, be comfortable and be you, we'll get a great show out of this.

Speaker 2 (24:16)

I wholeheartedly agree with that. And it brings it all back to that mindset of just preparing for before you go into it, because I can tell you, even though I theoretically should be talking 10% emotionally, physically, I'm more exhausted from trying to make sure I have everything streamlined in that perfect 60 Minutes window. Then I find almost no effort in being a guest and almost complete exhaustion being the host because of that perfection feeling.

Speaker 3 (24:43)

I mean, that is why we kind of switched this format where you're the host for the show. But I can sit back and answer questions because. Right. You asked me a question. I just answered. I have to think about it. I've lived, breathe and eat and slept this stuff and made these mistakes and answer these questions 100 times. Whereas if I was hosting this, I got to think about was that interesting? Do I want to ask this question?

Speaker 2 (25:04)

Am I interesting?

Speaker 3 (25:05)

Right. Is there something on my nose? Right. Being a host, even though, like you said, you're doing less, can be more exhausting because you're the ringleader, you are driving the train at the same time you're trying to entertain the passengers in the back.

Speaker 2 (25:25)

I like that analogy. There is definitely something you should remember there in consulting. There's probably even a conference track speech there for like, podcast movement or podcast.

Speaker 3 (25:41)

In that case, I'm going to make sure you create a social quote of this after the episode. I remember it. And that's why we're starting to see more clients who want us to help them record so that they can focus on just being the host as opposed to having to worry about, did I hit record? Right. All this is for not if you forget to record. So we're starting to offer services where we'll hit record for people or people are encouraged to make their set up as easy as possible so that they can just hit record. We love Riverside. I like Squad cast. But I tell my clients, like, if you run into five minutes, not even five minutes. If you run into two minutes of problems using one of these platforms, just switch over to Zoom. The reason why is I would much rather have 58 minutes of a great conversation at decent quality, then 25 minutes of a terrible conversation at high quality. Right. If you are having technical problems, it means that one, you're wasting time. You're probably frustrating your guests, you are frustrating yourself. And so when you finally get it to work, you're not going to have the conversation you want to have.

Speaker 3 (26:57)

You're going to feel rushed, you're going to feel flustered, you're going to be frustrated, you're going to lose your concentration, you're going to lose track of what you wanted to do. And the conversation is not going to come out as well as it should have. Whereas if you're just like, hey, you know what, this isn't working. Let's just go over to Zoom. Two minutes later, you're like, we're on Zoom. Cool, you good. Great. Let's get back. Let's do this. So the quality suffer is the Scouts or maybe a little bit more. But good value content with a bare minimum of quality is better than horrible content at the highest quality.

Speaker 2 (27:30)

Hardly agree. Well, we're going to switch over to our question, and it's kind of an easy question, but it's a rather hole question. And that question is I will try not to go down it. How do you judge show art? Because sometimes you can create art that looks like art and looks like, wow, that's really good. But from the purpose of selling your podcast, because we started the show with and finding your podcast and searching keywords. If you get a list of podcasts, essentially people are judging everything you've created by the book and the cover on it. And you only have probably 2 seconds, if that's being gracious, probably to make an impression with your show art. So when you consult people on creating good show art, what do you think about honestly.

Speaker 3 (28:14)

I like my show art to be simple. I want the name of the show, big, bold, and easy to read. Because two things. One, I don't believe a lot of people go window shopping in the podcast store. Right. I don't see a lot of people who are just hanging out and they're like, that's some clever artwork I'm going to click on the show. There are some obviously you say that and someone's going to be like, that's all I do.

Speaker 2 (28:39)

That's the only ones that have a clever name. There's one podcast. When she launched it, I was like, that's really good. It was unscrew me. And it was essentially unscrewing your parenting skills and you have those clever names, those will get me to slow down just a little bit more when I am window surfing or even just in Facebook when someone launches a podcast 100%.

Speaker 3 (28:59)

But right, that I don't think is nearly as important as what mostly happens is you tell somebody the name of your show, they go to the store, they type in the title, and what you want to have happen is they type in the title, they see your artwork and they go, that was the show I was looking for. So for me, the big focus is name of the show, big and bold. Remember, a lot of people do this on mobile devices. So even though you're making this huge 3000 by 3000 Pixel image, remember it shrinks down like this when someone's looking at on their phone. So make sure that at that size they can see it trying not to muck it up with too much other auxiliary nonsense on there. Yes. If you want to put your name on there, your company name, your brand name. Sure, get it in there, get in there. Tastefully. If you want to put your head shot on there. I think headshots are a great thing. If you have a good one, it makes you more personable, more approachable. Right. It's nice for people to see there's a real human that is connected to what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (29:56)

But for me, focus on the name of the show and everything else can be fun. You can be clever, but if you don't have those kinds of graphic skills, go to Canva open up a square, pick the font, pick your name, open it up, get some colors that match your branding and print it. You can always improve on it later, you can always tweak it and change it later. But the biggest problem you will run into with artwork is either someone comes across your show and there's no name on the artwork and they go, what the hell is this? Or there's so much going on your artwork, it's hard to know that this is the show that they are looking for. So truthfully with artwork. Kiss. Keep it simple, stupid.

Speaker 2 (30:40)

I know you were talking about the graphic of the picture of yourself and the portrait. I've struggled with this because initially I was like, I don't want to be the face. If you're thinking about the listener. My initial thought was always like, cover should speak to the listener, not like it shouldn't make it about me because it's not about me. It's about the people listening and getting value from it. So I was initially avoiding it. And then I was challenged recently a few months ago about like, you're a good looking guy. Why wouldn't you put that on there? Because every time they play an episode, they're getting to see you. And that just in and itself increases their ability to like you, remember you, and trust you without you ever even have to say a word. Because they just have to see your mug shot even more and hopefully doesn't look like a mug shot. But if it is something that they see there that it could intrinsically bring them back because they know the person behind the microphone more than the voice. I think it's more 50 50 and you're going with your gut. But what I'm learning in my own journey is if it is a personal brand, if it's not something that's a 500 person company or not something that's tied to a single personality, you probably should have your picture on there.

Speaker 2 (31:45)

And I've been talking myself into it more and more because I haven't moved the needle on it yet. But I talk to myself more and more into it as to just display of like, yes, I am a trustworthy guy. I'm not some weird guy. And I think that no like and truck sacks. No, like and trust is a huge thing that keeps people coming back to your podcast. And why not put your face there, right, to bring people back for?

Speaker 3 (32:07)

Well, let me just add two quick things before we wrap it up here. One, you could be trustworthy and you could be a weird guy. I think you fit both of those boxes. But two, more importantly, yeah, you are not just podcasting. You are building a relationship with your audience. And so if that relationship is between you personally and your audience, it's a little bit easier if they can see who you are right away from the front cover. Listen, you might not be comfortable with putting your face on there. You might be a more private person. You don't have to do that. Or this might be a brand podcast, in which case the person might not be as important. But if this is about you and you build your reputation, your brand and things like that, I'd say go ahead and throw your headshot on there, but also leave enough room for the title. Keep your ego out of it.

Speaker 2 (32:56)

I would agree with that. And I don't know any data related to this, but I would imagine if you were brand new listening to a podcast and you were just in a natural normal listening to it, getting deciding whether you want to continue listening to the Passy. Like few episodes. It probably wouldn't be like ten or 15 before I natively went to socials to follow someone. Or if they said something that really resonated, maybe that I want to make sure I catch everything they said because what they say is that important. And so if your face isn't there, I think if you're having it in the beginning could then increase the likelihood faster that they want to go because their entire time they're saying like, oh, this guy looks good, he looks normal, and he's saying normal things. I want to connect faster. So could maybe accelerate that process of them reaching out beyond just the podcasting platform. Well, that wraps up another episode. Podcast, me, anything. We broke the seal on being live on YouTube and Twitter and hopefully this will be something we continue and hopefully it becomes something that we get better at because in podcasting, the only way you fail is if you quit.

Speaker 2 (33:59)

So we're not going to hopefully quit at this live thing, so we're going to keep going and as long as you keep hitting publish, you keep growing and that is the most important part in podcasting. Thank you Matthew, for joining us today.

Speaker 3 (34:09)

Thank you. And that's another great social quote for yourself. You only failed when you quit like that a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:16)

That's so true in my life.